A BRIEF NOTE
Because I’ve decided to give a good chunk of my existence over to completing several books on which I am working, I haven’t had much time or mental or emotional space to do much reviewing for the past –how many?- months. On the other hand, sometimes one’s heart decrees that, with pen and notebook in hand, a different kind of attention must be paid, so what follows is another re-entry into the world of review and commentary. I intend that there will be more since, books and CDs and DVDs aside, who can willingly not attend performances by Hamilton Opera, Opera Atelier, Soulpepper Theatre Company, Canadian Stage, Canadian Opera Company, The Toronto Symphony, The Hamilton Philharmonic, The Hamilton Players’ Guild, and others, all of whose brochures I’ve been eyeing with hope for months. Thus, I truly feel you should, if possible, check out the following………
ARNOLD WEINSTEIN’S THREE AMAZING COURSES ON LITERATURE
Many years ago I reviewed a course on poetry from the Teaching Company. It was at a time when I was working on a new collection of my own and when I had just been a guest lecturer for a university class on aesthetics. In both the course and the class, I found varying degrees of self-indulgence with abstraction and little awareness of what actually happens when one tries to create a poem in writing. In fact, while listening to the course, I found myself laughing throughout. The professor seemed to be doing a Monty Python send-up of the obsessively self-referential academic who sets up a system of his own logic, one that doesn’t concur with other realities, and does so with a language that is obscure and solipsistic to justify his thinking. For years, I didn’t return to the Teaching Company because of this experience.
Several years ago, however, I became addicted to Teaching Company courses, of all things, in part because my dentist, a regular listener, enthusiastically sang their praises as he mined for ruin in my teeth and gums. In time I plan to recommend a number of these offerings from the Teaching Company, since I’ve been through many of them. The first mention, though only brief this time, refers to three courses by Arnold Weinstein, a professor at Brown University for thirty-five years. Those that I’ve listened to and which I intend to give another go, because of their many rewarding riches, are the following: Understanding Literature and Life: Drama, Poetry and Narrative; Classic Novels: Meeting the Challenge of Great Literature; Classics of American Literature.
Each of these courses is a consuming experience, and one senses that Weinstein’s attempts at understanding the many authors discussed in these recordings are each time a manifestation of his commitment to human truth. Many academics begin and remain in their heads, as if their bodies and much of the world we know by our senses do not exist. Weinstein, on the other hand, seems to approach words not only as a tool but as an extension of existence, one that has a sensory dimension, one that risks to say what it is, one that seeks to know more of what it is.
Weinstein is not an unnecessarily showy lecturer, but he is, happily, a passionate, companionable, and subtly gripping one who sees each author as a being of inherent value. We know the stakes are high as he speaks. We know that we can learn from him only by our own commitment to know who we are through the works of the authors he discusses with fresh and challenging insight. In Weinstein’s world, literature lives and breathes and, like each human being who makes it, remains in a constant state of becoming. Books are their authors and Weinstein’s challenge is that we too remain in a state of becoming beside the authors presented here who have each extended their being in words they put to paper. We learn a lot from Weinstein’s courses, we respect the profundity and articulation in them, we feel refreshed by their honesty, and –I say this rarely about an academic- we believe in him to the point of trusting him. He invites us to join him as he digs deep into our value and our meaning. I strongly recommend that you do.
CANADIAN STAGE
Canadian Stage has instantly remounted its production of Venus in Furs, beginning December 13 to 29, this time at the Berkeley Street Theatre and not where it ended its run only weeks ago at the Bluma Appel. Rick Miller plays Thomas and Carly Street plays Vanda. The pace is unrelenting, the switches in mood and reality are unpredictable and quick, the intuitive rapport between the actors is unforced and enticing, the theatricality of the piece is insistent, and the humanity conveyed Miller and Street is delicious and unsettling. Vanda is a mercurial, resourceful and mentally agile creature and I found myself sitting forward in my seat, with my mouth hanging open much of the time, in response to Street’s creation. After the matinee performance I told both actors that I had to see Venus in Furs again because I had to catch up with what I had seen the first time. Enthusiastically and warmly recommended.
SOULPEPPER
Another production I intend to see again is the The Norman Conquests, by Alan Ayckbourn, that begins on February 10 at Soulpepper in Toronto. This production is also an instant remounting, having ended its initial run about a month ago to much enthusiasm from its audiences. And no wonder, since director Ted Dykstra here extracts gem performances from six distinctly gifted actors: Derek Boyes as Reg, Laura Condlln as Annie, Oliver Dennis as Tom, Sarah Mennell as Ruth, Fiona Reid as Sarah, and Albert Schultz as Norman, this being the very Norman of the play’s title. Inevitably you’ll recognize some of your family or your friends or perhaps your enemies here in this very human trio of plays. I had missed The Norman Conquests twice before in London, for some reason, and am glad to have the opportunity to see it twice on my home turf –well almost, since I live in Hamilton. Highly recommended.
LONDON
While in London in early October, I unfortunately missed a trip to Oxford to see an exhibition of Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, as I had planned. Happily, the Ontario Gallery of Art is importing this very show from the Ashmolean Museum starting April 5 for three months. I did snag a ticket to the Donmar Warehouse –often hard to do- to see a production of Roots by Arnold Wesker and came away deeply moved by this splendidly rich ensemble production. I had never seen a play by Wesker on stage -if memory serves me right- and, yes, Wesker can be given to laying on the dialogue, but here we had immaculately detailed and subtly understated acting throughout. Linda Bassett and Ian Gelder played the rich-as-the-earth rural parents of Beatie with an instinctive sense of truth to their characters and, as Beatie herself, Jessica Raine proved, with exquisite savvy about the overt and unspoken aspects of her coming-of-age character, why she is being touted as a “huge star in the making”.